The Solution (Per NRA)
Armed guards in schools.
Armed guards in daycare.
Armed guards in churches.
We’re talking about liberty, God
damn it.
Armed guards in groceries.
Armed guards in gas stations.
Armed guards on mass transit.
Armed guards in traffic jams.
Armed guards on street corners.
What part of “freedom,”
don’t you frigging
understand?
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Fifty-five loaded words for the G-Man. Go tell him and everyone.
Downtown NYC Not-So-Kyrielle
Little black boxes line the street.
I don’t quite know how caught rats meet
their doom; just that this life’s sure tough,
though we cry uncle, Lord, enough.
Walk next by 9/11’s hole
now asphalt filled, pressed ash and soul,
where shuffling tourists huddling chuff
(and I cry uncle, Lord, enough.)
Tied to cell, a broker f-words:
“don’t tell clients to buy secureds==
our fee’s cut down with that f- stuff,”
(as I cry uncle, Lord, enough.)
Sidewalks grey; the sky-rofoam white–
day chases cAsh to black-box night==
I seek the lee, but find the luff,
crying uncle, oh Lord, enough.
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Here’s my (draft) version of a Kyrielle, a French form, which I’m trying for Gay Cannon’s prompt on dVerse Poets Pub Form for All. Gay has a great article about them – my understanding is that they started from the idea of Kyrie Eleison in the Catholic mass, though have ventured far afield.
A couple of process notes – yes, there are these weird black rat boxes all around downtown. 9/11 is meant to be pronounced “nine-eleven.” (I’m sure you got that.) (I have nothing against the tourists.) And yes, a broker from a bank was shouting f-words very loudly today by my ATM at the thought of a reduced investment commisions.
Stupor
I don’t care what kind of girl (16)
she was; you don’t lug around, for
amusement, a person
passed out, undress her, pose
her (poking
her privates), possibly piss
on her.
And you, photographers multiple–what
were you
on the other side of your
phone’s lens? From what planet/pit
had you crept? Probocsides and digits
flywalking, snapping; clicking tweets
flesh-beaked–
In upload, no hand left
for humanity.
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Another terrible incident in the news, in Steubenville, Ohio. I make no pronouncements on facts – I only have read what’s in the paper, and what I’ve gleaned from that is that a fair amount of awful stuff seems to have been photographed and put online.
Posting this for dVerse Poets Open Link Night.
Purgatory
We sat in the back seat arguing
about mortal sin, seams
of steaming upholstery creasing
backs of knees, nice
dresses, car an oven
waiting for Celeste’s
mom stopped to get something first
at the BX.
Even Celeste’s freckles haughty–being Catholic,
she felt she knew so much more
about such things–the classification
of sin–laughing in a funeral parlor one, but way worse
dying without
first communion.
But she was only two
and a half.
She shrugged shoulders boney
as chicken wings, confident
of her stuff–her whole family
somehow scrawny, seven kids and dad a pilot,
Vietnam.
The actual place smelled so thick–of dark
and wax, flowers that came
from a shop (refrigeration and
pollen stilled
by spray)– that I feared that I
might sneeze, Celeste
laugh, and then me too, both damned
forever– until I saw her–Dolly–Dorothy–
as molded as her nickname petaled
in satin white, lips pinked
into a rose bud like the nips
of the smallest bouquet by her head–a card that looked
like embroidery on
a bib–“Grampy”–in looping letters.
Celeste’s mom’s plank-back shook–a loose board
stepped on hard, as Mrs. Kerner, Dolly’s mother, appeared, her face
shining as if washed with water from a frozen
bucket, Celeste and I carefully not looking
at each other–it wasn’t that
we would laugh, but the idea
that our throated chests
could move at all, our eyes, our unbound
suntanned legs, felt
like a sin in that room, surely
mortal.
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The above is a draft poem for dVerse Poets Pub’s Poetics prompt by the incomparable Brian Miller to use more detail in making a scene. Still away from home but have my computer at last (have been relying on mobile devices, which are fantastic in many ways, but not like a computer.)
Sad, as we all are. I’ve tried to stay away from TV coverage; unbearable.
Walnuts (Washington, D.C.)
Several
glasses of wine, blocks
of stop-start walk, still
can’t get the damn dog down
to business.
December irises make me
wonder if we haven’t wandered all the way
to Tunlaw–street where backwards
gets stuck in front–but don’t think the dog
can read in this dim light. Street signs
too high too.
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55 loopy words for the G-Man. http://g-man-mrknowitall.blogspot.com/
Sorry not to do link correctly, doing everything on mobile devices the last few days, and I’m not that good at them.
Have a great weekend. k.
In the Second Person
Your brain is mapped into fault lines.
“I” marking each spot typically–
where blame fell or was
assigned, responsibility–until
there arrives, unexpectedly, a point of
surrender.
There is a reason that “you”
are called the second person.
The gimlet “I” that was charging so assuredly ahead
crumples faster than could have
been guessed, those old demarcations blotted
with smarting
tears, leaving you all that can see
through its covered face.
At first, you only make out corners — that bookshelf
framed in brown, that yellowed grass peripheral to
stuccoed sidewalk, but your rangy heart knows
escape routes, can find even the smallest
interstice slicing the hard here, harsh now.
You take the “I” in hand, but gently–a reassuring
pat not
out of order–
whisper, “come”.
********************************
I am posting the above extremely rough draft poem for (dVerse Poets Pub prompt hosted by Victoria C. Slotto on writing in the Second Person.
I’m not sure what the picture has to do with it! But like the picture.
Stream
You want someone
to make amends, a specific
someone, though you know
they won’t, can’t–that it is like expecting flotsam
to swim butterfly
upstream. So you tell yourself
that maybe you should make
the grand gesture,
if not towards that particular someone then
someone else, certain that simple motions
of atonement, no matter where
directed, will slosh froth
back, will be,
as it were, self-
(a)mending.
Such strategies do
net ripple but an eddy in
your hippocampus still gyrates around
a blur of that more particular
reconciliation, an unfurling
of shine and flow in which your specific
someone would free, with a single stroke, the knot
that has clotted your spine
for nearly a lifetime.
But they won’t. Can’t. And you–
if you cannot, on your own, stretch straight, must learn
to crawl crooked, adjusting
for habitual kinks through a purposefully
listing keel.
*************************
Posting this, really kind of a draft poem, for dVerse Poets Open Link Night hosted by the wonderful Grace.
First Words
CHEESE!
Well, PEARL real first word: PEARL, PEARLIE, PEARL CUTIE PIE—me.
So, PEARL, CHEESE both real first words. And with PEARL, CHEESE, all
fall within paw!
“Pearl–you want to PLAYBALL?”
PLAYBALL not CHEESE, but go in mouth and run run run sniff good.
“Hey Pearl – let’s go OUTSIDE.”
OUTSIDE not CHEESE, but wood-stuff, grass-stuff, PEARL NOT ON MOM’s–rrrrrun run run run!
DOGFOOD not CHEESE. Yech! (They sure wouldn’t eat it!)
Sniff wait sniff wait sniff wait wait wait.
“Mom, we can’t let her starve.”
CHEESE!
Interment
I cannot bear to lay you in the ground–
not even in your ash state, shaped by urn;
it seems so cold below that clay-clung mound,
too harshly gelid to comfort harshest burn.
It’s true pooled ash leaves little to discern–
it cannot bare; it lays you into ground-
up bóne and góne and chár, while I still yearn
for spark–the live shine caught upon the round
of tooth, cheek, pupil–that in rebound
caught me. I want to know, but fear to learn
just why I cannot lay you in the ground
without my throat hard-bartered for a quern
that re-mills pain with every swallow’s turn,
that grínds what’s already fíne around
and round, allowing neither fruit nor fern–
that cannot bear to lay you in the ground.
****************************
Here’s a reading of the poem. (I sometimes hate to take people’s time with readings, but in this case, the poem works much better read. I have changed one word since posting the reading, but it’s pretty minor.)
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The above is a quatern – a new poetic form for me, that involves a repeating line. I wrote it for Gay Cannon’s challenge on dVerse Poets Pub (“Form For All”). I am afraid I used a slightly longer (pentameter) line than recommended for the form. I urge you to check out Gay’s explanation of the form and the wonderful poets at dVerse.
And – if you have a moment – check out my books! Perfect for CHEAP Christmas presents! Poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco). 1 Mississippi -counting book for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms, orNose Dive. Nose Dive is available on Kindle for just 99 cents!
Collapse (of the Memory Palace)
Onces I could recall
were once numbered in the many,
like a building so stories tall–
now, not any.
Not true, not fair. Still, a lodging rather small
now houses about all.
And it seems to be built of scone,
the kind with currents sultanal–
I’d prefer stone,
which wouldn’t flake as I walk down the hall,
spot grease on every wall
instead of portraits, landscapes, fine,
their contours round me like a shawl,
warm with that time–
lost many–before memory’s crumbled fall.
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A reading of the poem:
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My picture, in case for some strange reason you can’t quite tell, is meant to be a scone house. I am posting this for a With Real Toads challenge of Kerry O’Connor to write a poem in a rhyming and meter format developed by the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). I’ve used one of Rossetti’s images (the face in the window of the scone house), and also stretched/squeezed in some of his background leaves.
For American readers, sultanas are known in the U.S. as golden raisins – I’m afraid I’ve made them too dark in my picture. A “memory palace” is an age-old technique for memorization, which involves placing whatever is to be remembered in a slightly strange context in some part of a known physical space. (Joshua Foer has written a wonderful book about this – MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN.) I was not frankly thinking about that use of memory when initially writing the poem, but it’s kind of a fun connection.
Check out Kerry’s prompt for more info on Rossetti’s form, and also for other poets taking the challenge.
Also, if you get a moment, CHECK OUT MY BOOKS! Great for Christmas presents! Poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco). 1 Mississippi -toddlers’ counting book for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms, orNose Dive. Nose Dive is available on Kindle for just 99 cents!
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